


teach our bodies, haunt the cause

by nextgreatadventure



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, LBC, Multi, Polyamory, goat getting, it's both and neither, season 4 canon compliant, season 4 canon divergent, team threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:50:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They want to take care of each other now, they want take care of Bo, they want to take care of this whole small, fragile family that they’ve found and sustained and nurtured. And if repeatedly saving the world happens to coincide with this desire, well then, all the better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	teach our bodies, haunt the cause

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adventurepants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/gifts).



> wow i think i've just lady-sired the first lauren/dyson tag on ao3, i feel sort of proud?
> 
> here goes: iiii wrote this because i wanted a story about all of the _heart_ this show has, all the love. i initially started out writing about just lauren and dyson, but i wanted to write a story about how the love triangle could grow into a real relationship without lauren having to "compromise" her (gay) identity (but then of course i had to add everyone else because how do you not). i wanted to write about these complicated sexualities and complicated relationships and show how they could end up becoming something beautiful and perfect and real that ultimately cannot be boxed up with a neat little label. i mean that's kinda why we watch the show, right? right. so there's my background reasoning and i sincerely hope i succeeded at least a little.
> 
> i took some liberties with s4 canon because frankly i can’t remember what’s real and what’s not anymore. this is compliant through 4x11 and divergent from there. title is from bon iver.
> 
> lastly: super honored to have adventurepants in my life, guys. she made writing this feel like a very special journey.
> 
> i hope this finds some other tender readerships, too.

 

 

\---

 

_is there room in my heart_

_for you to follow your heart_

-tori amos

 

\---

 

 

 

One time, fairly recently, Kenzi had asked (and they both thought she was only joking, but she thought she was only half joking), "So you guys kissed and made up, huh?"

Lauren looked at Kenzi and Dyson looked at Lauren.

"Yeah," Lauren said. "I guess so."

Kenzi exhaled dramatically. "Thank the faeby jesus. Fine-a-frickin'-ly."

Dyson smiles at the memory, because looking back, they never were very good at hating one another.

 

 

\---

 

 

Bo doesn't want to see them, so they go to the Dal and order four pitchers, three shots, two bottles of wine. They have to practically drag Kenzi away from waiting (she's tiny and Dyson picks her up round the middle like a kitten round the scruff of the neck). It's hard for Lauren and Dyson too, but they find some mutual solace in being mutually shut out.

"Drink this," Dyson instructs, pushing a clear shot in Kenzi's direction. 

Lauren pours Dyson a drink before she pours her own.

"Sláinte," Dyson tips his pint to Lauren's glass, and then to Kenzi's.

"To everything turning out happily ever after, minus one douche fae rockabilly wannabe," Kenzi sighs. She holds up four crossed fingers and drinks deeply.  


Lauren echoes Dyson's ancient toast quietly.

They're a small, dysfunctional, tense family, but a family nonetheless. Even without Bo.

"Pool?" Lauren suggests wearily, long, silent moments later.

They're all feeling down, but Dyson tries his best to pick them back up. It is something Lauren has grown to admire about him (something Kenzi and Bo always have).

He grins that wolf grin and says, "Best two out of three, doc." He stands and holds out a hand. Lauren accepts it. "Watch out, because I'm gonna kick your skinny human ass."

"Yeah, yeah," Lauren taunts as she cues up the balls. "Do your worst, wolfie."

 

 

\---

 

 

Dyson throws his arm around Lauren's shoulders. It's late, four pitchers three shots two bottles of wine late, and they're tipsy; Kenzi is murmuring endlessly in Hale's ear in a corner booth nearby.

"Hey doc," he sways, words slurring slightly. "Check it out: everybody's all paired off but us. Hashtag forever alone."

Lauren raises a brow. Dyson withers at the look. "Something Kenzi said once," and he shuffles his big feet.

Lauren is worried about Bo and mad at Bo and she's had enough to drink to agree with Dyson (again). To indulge in their tender new ex-rival camaraderie.

"Maybe you and I make a run for it," she snorts. She can feel the muscles in Dyson's long arms move along her shoulders as he swirls the dregs of his pint around.

"Yeah! Bonnie and Clyde?"

"Or Thelma and Louise."

Dyson makes a distasteful noise. "I already ran off one cliff recently, thanks."

"Okay, Bonnie and Clyde. But I get to be Clyde." 

Dyson grins and he wants to tell Lauren how her hair smells of lemon and juniper, for no real reason really, just because it _does_ , but he tells her instead, "I trust Tamsin but now I'd probably run off a cliff with you too, you know."

Lauren twists slightly to lay a hand against his chest in a mock swoon. "Be still my heart." She means for it to come off sarcastic and it does, but it also sounds tired and she doesn't want to sound tired (but she is, she is so tired, and she knows that Dyson is, too.)

She also means to remove her hand right away and she does, but it lingers two beats too long, and she doesn't want to linger at all.

 

The next round of pool is sloppy-drunk and half-assed and when Lauren wins, again, Dyson pretends to believe that it’s because he let her. He thinks about how he loves her as a friend now, has begun to love her against all of the odds between them, but he's also watching her lean arms as she aims, he's watching her face and her silly, beautiful smile. He’s thinking about Bo, and how both their hearts must be hurting in unison.

He doesn’t want Lauren to hurt anymore.

Lauren is human and she's the smartest woman he's ever met, and he thinks Bo should choose her because Lauren’s life will be over in a flurry of bright moments, and theirs will endure for long and lonely centuries. He wants Bo to share that with her because Lauren deserves more than she’s been dealt, and Bo deserves it too, and he doesn't linger on how the jealousy inside of him doesn't line up at all the way it used to.

 

 

\---

 

 

“You remind me of my brother,” Lauren says. She doesn’t know why she said it except that her fingers are against his forehead, sopping away half-dried blood, and it feels oddly sort of intimate, a quiet and confessional space. And he does (remind her -- especially in this moment, when she blinks her eyes to clear the memories like cobwebs).

Dyson laughs, and it takes her so far back. His laughter is bright and warm and he says, “Really? I’m honored.”

And he does seem honored, with quiet eyes that look at her and crinkle and smile, and her chest ache eases just a little bit even though her heart ache throbs painfully.

“Yeah,” she says, swallowing, dabbing the corner of his swollen eye and avoiding his gaze.

“He’s gone now?” Dyson asks.

“Yes,” Lauren says again, blinking away thin tubes of metal, the smell of chloric acid, dead ringing in her ears, “he’s gone now.”

The cut was shallow and clean and Dyson won’t need stitches -- she tells him so, and he thanks her in a soft voice.

Lauren is packing up her things when Dyson’s soft voice carries across the studio again. “Lauren, could you stay a while longer?”

 

Her boots are on the floor next to him and they’ve both got a beer in hand. They’ve been talking about past lives and Lauren has just as much to contribute to the conversation as Dyson does. It’s strange, talking together like this, because these confessions between them are things they’ve never really discussed even with Bo. 

Dyson knows Lauren’s brother’s name now, where she really grew up, when she realized she was gay. Lauren knows Dyson’s favorite forest in Scotland, knows what it smells like, knows why he can never go back. Knows how much that hurts him.

Lauren says Bo might be jealous of the way they’re talking. Dyson says he doesn’t care, because even though Bo is most important to them both, maybe they need this. The three of them are inextricably linked now, and Dyson wants to know Lauren, wants to know this woman that Bo loves with her whole strong heart.

“I’m sorry we didn’t protect you better,” Dyson tells her later, after they've drunk all the shitty beer Dyson had in his fridge, after they've already exhausted themselves talking about every other thing except the apology they've never actually given one another. “I’m sorry we couldn’t.”

Lauren’s lips curve into an ironic smile. “It’s okay,” she says. “I know how to survive.”

“I know that you do.”

Lauren’s smile becomes less sharp.

“I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you," he continues. Lauren tilts her chin down, folds into herself slightly the way she always does when she internalizes, for better or for worse. "I'm sorry for the way the Fae have treated you. You’ve been through hell. You and Kenzi are the strongest people I know.”

“Thank you, Dyson,” Lauren says quietly. She doesn't look up, but she's touched by his honesty because it is crystal clear, because it's one of the few, more transparent apologies she's ever been given (and that, with Lauren's track record, is definitely something). Lauren almost reaches for his hand. “You’ve made a lot of sacrifices yourself," she tells him. "For Bo, for Kenzi, for me. I truly am thankful.”

Dyson, always so bold, takes her hand first. There is nothing more reassuring to Lauren than Bo’s hands against her, but it occurs to her now that Bo must find so much of the same reassurance in Dyson’s (or used to). She doesn’t make a habit of holding hands with men, or women, especially those she used to distrust, but Dyson isn’t just a man she used to distrust anymore.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” Dyson says. “But I will be there if you need me. You’re stuck with me, now. Wolves never leave their pack.”

Lauren grins. “Cheesy,” she notes. “Nicely done.”

But in this moment, she can’t help but feel very, very special. For a while, after Bo, after Dyson, she struggled to understand (despite her expansive knowledge of the species) what a succubus like Bo would see in a wolf like Dyson. Being in love with Bo didn’t help her perspective, and she spent so long being angry at Dyson, being jealous, being confused and defiant. She spent so long feeling like she was not enough.

She thinks she understands now, how intimate such fierce loyalty can feel. Why betrayal hurts the worst. How jealousy poisoned them both.

How they never hated each other, not really.

“I get it, finally,” she tells him. “I think. What Bo sees in you.”

Dyson sighs. “Ah, Doctor Lewis.” His beard tickles her knuckles as he places a chivalrous kiss against them. “Welcome to the love. I’ve been here for ages.”

There is something in the way Dyson is looking at her that makes Lauren flush, and flashes of emotion (curiosity, confusion, disbelief, heat) surge across her skin.

She rationalizes these sudden feelings, compartmentalizes them in an instant. She thinks there is still a dark, irrational, self-preserving jealously lurking somewhere within her, and she knows that desire is fluid, she knows that friendship coupled with sudden emotional intimacy will make the brain fire and misfire and fire again, make the body react in ways inconsistent with a typical behavior.

But if Bo has taught her anything it’s that love is not simply science, and if she has learned anything about herself it’s that she is capable, that she knows herself, that she owns herself. That she most certainly is enough. 

Lauren knows that if the bizarre thought of kissing Dyson flashes across her mind now, it has everything and nothing to do with Bo, and surely by the look on Dyson’s face she was not the first to think it.

 

 

\---

 

 

Weeks pass and Bo and Rainer fuck a lot more shit up, and the Una Mens, ever terrifying, loathe them all by association.

Lauren and Dyson are worried for Bo’s life these days (whenever were they not? but she won’t even talk to them about it this time, and that makes all the awful difference).

They still help when she calls, of course. They’ll never stop fighting by her side. Bo visits Lauren sometimes, still, in the middle of the night or in the middle of the day when she should be working, backs her up against the wall or presses her down into the bed. Her mouth and hands still make Lauren see stars, even when she’s angry, even when she’s so frustrated with Bo that she thinks surely her body will simply refuse to show the love she hates to feel. But it never does, and it’s never enough, and Bo always leaves and Lauren is always dissatisfied. 

She thinks Bo is just as dissatisfied because her eyes are a little darker and she doesn’t smile like she used to. Sometimes Lauren wonders why she comes at all, and if the fact that she does means that there’s still some thread of hope that they might really pull out of this haze.

Bo thinks she’s in love with Rainer, thinks he’s her destiny, and that’s never not going to leave a bad taste in the mouths of everyone who actually cares about her. Lauren wants to rip Rainer limb for limb, wants to set his blood on fire for putting them all through this (she refuses to believe he isn’t responsible). Dyson laughs when Lauren tells him this, and he seems impressed by all the creative ways she knows to inflict pain, to brush mercy aside.

“I’m glad I’m on your good side now,” he says. “Dark becomes you.”

Sometimes Bo shows up at Dyson’s place and she never spends the night. Dyson thinks maybe Bo had finally gotten to the point where _choosing_ wasn’t the hell it used to be, but now she’s found herself right back at the beginning. Bo touches him all over but it hurts, as much as any bruise or knife wound. It’s so confusing for them both, and it’s so natural to call Lauren after she leaves because Lauren has dedicated her life to healing and Dyson is so grateful that they’re in this together now.

“What are we going to do?” Dyson asks, sitting with his head in his hands on Lauren’s new couch in her new loft, and she’s looking at him like that ingenious brain of hers has finally, finally failed her. 

“I don’t know,” she replies. She hasn’t given up but she may have given in, and Dyson hates the twisted, defeated, self-deprecating smile on her lips.

Dyson is here because she let him come, because his place still smells like Bo and he couldn’t stay there. Lauren’s place smells like Bo too though, just a little, and so he knows she’s been here recently. But there’s lemon and juniper, and Lauren is the only one who understands.

“Remember when it was easy there, for a while?” He asks with a smirk. The teasing, the light-hearted competition over Bo that they shared for a brief time is something he has sorely missed these last months. 

Lauren laughs and glances into her hands. “For about a millisecond, yes. I remember.”

Sometimes they try to resurrect it all, the teasing, the sense of family they’d unwittingly worked so hard to attain, but it turns sad so quickly, and all the ashes fall ghost-like to the floor around them.

“I never thought getting over Bo would turn into not having her at all,” Dyson says, and Lauren blows out a long, long breath in the subsequent silence.

But it’s _not_ Bo, she wants to tell him, but she doesn’t have to because they both already know this. The terrifying thing is that she’s been gone from them before, but never for quite this long.

 

 

\---

 

 

Late one evening, when Lauren is pulling her jeans back on and the sky is turning from red to black, Evony touches her shoulder and presents her with a dusty old bottle.

“Elder scotch, distilled by the High King Cernunnos himself,” she boasts in her ever-velvet voice, a plum thumbnail scratching down the bottleneck absently.

Lauren raises a brow and turns away again to button her blouse. “Cernunnos himself, really? Wow.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m pretty sure Cernunnos is a myth,” Lauren tells her. “An important one, but a myth nonetheless.”

Evony laughs and it sounds like a chorus of murderous windchimes. “Oh, sweetie. Is that what the Ash told you? And you believed him?”

Lauren shakes her head, a smile playing around her lips. She watches Evony toe back into her black slingbacks. “Why are you giving it to me?”

“Oh, no reason, really.” Evony sighs and smiles, and only when Lauren comes closer and plays her fingertips against Evony’s forearm does Evony touch her back (Lauren is still getting used to the way she no longer has to remember that her body is not her own). Evony presses her thumb to Lauren’s bottom lip and says, “I suppose because I think it will taste delicious on you.”

 

As she leaves, Evony calls to Lauren from the door, “Feel free to share that bottle with whomever you’d like in the meantime, darling. There’s plenty to go around.”

Lauren is brilliant and calculating and Evony knows this, Lauren _knows_ she knows this, and so she wonders why Evony is lying to her. Cernunnos is Dyson’s patron, as Evony is well aware, and she knows that Lauren and Dyson have become close. 

Surely it should be Bo that Evony would use Lauren to get close to, but that strategy, Lauren supposes, has become obsolete. Either way, Lauren has spent too long being a prisoner of the Light to ever think that the Dark would be very different.

 

 

\---

 

 

Dyson glances from the bottle and back up to Lauren, and then back to the bottle again.

“A round about gift from the Morrigan,” Lauren tells him slyly. “I think she’s trying to tell me something. Or tell you something. I’m not sure. Anyway,” she sighs and gestures vaguely, “I tested it, it’s fine. It’s just...really old whiskey.”

Dyson twists the bottle in his hand, admiring the green glass and the intricate pair of antlers etched therein.

“There’s an abnormally high level of vervain in there, but I assume you can attest to that being fairly common.”

Dyson murmurs a vague affirmative. 

“She told me to ‘share it with whomever I wanted’,” Lauren tells him.

Dyson grins. “Maybe she’s elaborately proposing a threesome.”

Lauren elbows him. “For so many reasons, that will not be happening.”

“Ah, you’re right. Rules are rules. We wouldn’t want to risk pissing off the Una Mens, now would we? Oh _wait_.”

Lauren rolls her eyes. “Shut up,” she says, and takes a long swig of beer.

“I don’t know, Lauren, things are definitely changing.” Dyson glances back down to the bottle again. “I don’t want to preach, but this threat from the Una Mens is the sort of thing that has historically brought our two sides together. Maybe it’s a peace offering.”

Lauren scoffs. “From the _Morrigan_?”

“I don’t know, you seem to be getting to know her pretty well, yourself.”

“Shut up,” Lauren says again, voice muffled around the neck of the beer bottle.

Dyson holds up his hands in surrender. “Hey, more power to you, girlfriend.”

Sighing, Lauren places her bottle on the coffee table and leans back into the cushions. Their shoulders brush, and Lauren is relaxed enough to lean into him. Dyson tips his head onto hers.

“As long as she’s treating you right,” Dyson says quietly, an amendment to his previous declaration.

Lauren thinks about dirty stone cells and archaic wrist cuffs, humiliation and terror and _Nadia_ and how Bo couldn’t trust her for so, so long. How Evony never touches her unless Lauren lets her. “Yes,” she says finally. “She’s treating me all right.”

She doesn’t tell Dyson anything else, like the way she and Evony are using one another for different ends, the way the mutual distrust and the mutual freedom from any attachment whatsoever has given way to some other dimension of mutuality that Lauren finds difficult to put her finger on. Mutual understanding, maybe?

Maybe this is how all revolutions start, how old feuds are (at least momentarily) forgotten -- with a move that cannot be quantified until suddenly it can. After all, she and Dyson could be a testament to this, a microcosm, a love and respect spontaneously evolved of dire circumstances and a willingness to admit to their individual faults. A willingness to forget the past and work together.

Two years ago, Dyson was a catalyst. Tonight, he’s an anchor. Lauren feels less like a victim now than she ever did before, she feels stronger and surer and less likely to put up with Fae bullshit, but she’s still scared. She’s still tired. She misses Bo, the Bo that was hers and Dyson’s and _all_ of theirs. The Bo that made her feel like anything could happen and everything would still be alright eventually, everything would be okay.

She and Dyson go ahead and split half the bottle of elder scotch (Lauren’s pretty sure neither of them have a death wish, but only pretty sure). She hopes that Dyson is right about Evony’s motives because while sleeping with her has been its own kind of extraordinary and empowering, while Lauren has seen her perfect hair tousled and her mask slip with each immaculate clothing item stripped away, at the end of every day she’s not really convinced of anything at all.

 

Dyson ends up drinking much more than Lauren does. He becomes a little maudlin, but not annoyingly so (not very, anyway). He tells Lauren stories about the Green Man of the Forest, and before he passes out completely, Lauren suggests that they make an offering of the drink to Dyson's horned god. Dyson hasn't made an offering in years, but Lauren's hands are steady against him as they pour it onto the hearth stone and he has missed this connection with the Old Ways so very, very much. 

He has felt so lost, and with Bo his only anchor and his wolf not quite what it used to be, he's been sea tossed for years now.

(They both love Bo so much they fear their hearts will never, ever recover, but it has always been just as hard for them, just as much of a sacrifice, as it ever was for her.)

 

It is the wee hours of the morning when Lauren kicks open her bedroom door and stumbles in, Dyson leaning heavily against her. She's got his arm around her, her arm around his waist, and they barely make it to the bed. 

She tries to deposit him gently, but it doesn't quite happen that way. She's had enough to drink, too, and her foot slips against the cold hardwood floor.

They sort of just melt into it, then, the inelegant fall, and Dyson pulls her close as though this was his intention all along. The whole bedroom positively overflows, ringing with the sound of their laughter.

The next morning they won't remember for the life of them what was so funny, but it hardly matters because what Lauren will remember is the way her chest opens up and she can _breathe_ again, and Dyson will remember the way her hand falls languidly against his cheek. He will remember how her mattress is so soft, and how the moonlight is so bright that he watches her eyelids close just before she kisses him.

(It's more curiosity and less heat, less pressure, more breath -- a gentle sort of mistake, but Dyson notes the way Lauren's breath hitches...)

They're alone and they’re drunk and it could get so very awkward, the sort of unbearable that is actually, literally, unmistakably unbearable.

He is softer than she ever would have known, though, warm like the hand that wraps around her wrist, the thumb that brushes her radial pulse. Dyson is all heart, all heart and all warmth and so _gentle_ in his strength. When she thinks about Dyson kissing Bo this way her chest and hands begin to tremble and burn, and when she thinks about Bo kissing Dyson like she kisses her, she parts her lips wider.

Bo is all heart, too. Lauren doesn’t want to give up. She lets herself sink in and in and in.

 

It barely goes any farther than this, even though Dyson has to catch his breath when they part (when did he realize that Lauren was this able and fragile and beautiful in her humanity? he knows, he knows exactly when, but it's no less a marvel for the remembering).

Lauren catches sight of his face as she pulls away and his eyes are shut tight and she just--

She wants to kiss them open again, like Bo did for her. Wants to tell him she thinks everything will probably be okay even though she has no reason to believe it will.  


She sighs into his neck instead. He curls his big body against hers, the smaller and more breakable, and she wonders how they will feel tomorrow.

Lauren cups a palm to the back of his neck. He isn't like anything she's ever wanted before, and she's not sure she even wants him now, but she does want to keep holding him close. She hasn't had a real friend that wasn't Bo in a long, long time.

 

In the morning when Dyson wakes, it’s to the sound of the shower running. When Lauren comes back into the bedroom wrapped in a robe with sopping wet hair, they catch one another’s gaze. Dyson grins, and Lauren’s face breaks into a vaguely embarrassed smile as she glances to the floor. 

“Tea, doc?” He asks.

She nods and he heads into the kitchen and that, as they say, is that.

 

 

\---

 

 

“How’s Kenzi?”

“Oh, peachy,” Tamsin says airily. She swings her feet a little as Lauren slips the needle beneath her skin, pulls the thread taught. There’s a few moments silence, and Tamsin sighs. “Actually, doc, she’s really not.”

Lauren bows her head to her chest, shakes it side to side. None of them are, really. She was expecting that.

“Hale’s doing his best, but brother can’t fill that space all the way, you know? No one could. She misses Bo.” Tamsin bows her head, too.

“Has she been around?” Lauren asks lightly.

“Bo? Yeah, a little, I think. From what I can figure from K’s daily text updates. Girl could translate the freakin’ bible into emoji. It’s a gift.”

The corner of Lauren’s mouth lifts slightly, and she’s reminded all over again that she’d do anything for these people.

“But she’s safe,” Lauren says, watching Tamsin’s profile carefully for an affirmation that comes a few moments later in the gentle nodding of Tamsin’s head. 

Lauren breathes out steadily, and tries to lighten the subject.

“Is The Morrigan enjoying her trip to Paris?” She asks, stripping away her latex gloves.

Tamsin slips back into her tank and replies, “I dunno. Thought you could tell me.”

Lauren tries to skate right past that, but Tamsin catches her eye. “Don’t sweat it, doc. We’re on the same side, now. I’m not gonna go blabbing to anyone.”

It’s true; Tamsin has been in regular attendance to Lauren’s place for nearly two months. The Valkyrie brings her news and supplies and updates and gashes to stitch up and Lauren can almost forget that time she slapped her in the face because _this_ Tamsin isn’t the old Tamsin, just like this Lauren isn’t the old Lauren.

The Dark has adopted a ‘keep your head down, try not to piss anyone off _too_ much’ sort of strategy when it comes to the Una Mens’ witch hunt (so to speak -- the witches have, in general, done nothing to warrant the Una Mens’ wrath this century).

Tamsin hisses slightly, trying to shrug her jacket back on. Lauren goes around her and helps her arm into the sleeve. The newly stitched wound disappears beneath soft teal leather.

“Dyson?” Lauren asks. She keeps her hand on Tamsin’s arm, just enough pressure to betray the fact that she cares very, very much. Dyson’s taken some heat recently for Bo; he can’t risk being seen with the Dark fae’s human doctor right now. Tamsin is much more accustomed to keeping in the shadows.

Tamsin looks down at Lauren’s fingers, and back up into her face. “He misses Bo. He misses you.” She neglects to mention that they’ve been sleeping together, off and on, when the longing becomes unmanageable. When Tamsin’s memories flare and she can’t be with her family because of choices she made lifetimes ago, before she knew better; when Dyson feels empty and hopeless and their old new friendship is one of the only things they can flee to that feels like home. 

It’s not perfect, but it works. For a little while.

“And you,Tamsin?” Lauren’s voice is quiet and Tamsin can tell that she cares very much about this, too. Tamsin couldn’t always register love because she went for centuries knowing only war and loss -- but today, sitting in Lauren’s apartment, she remembers Bo’s smile and Kenzi’s hugs and she covers Lauren’s hand with her own. Today she can accept, can reciprocate.

They’re in this mess together, after all. Linked by a red thread of fate.

“Holding up,” Tamsin says, with a wealth of subtext. Lauren breathes out. “You?”

“Holding up,” Lauren echoes.

Tamsin’s mouth quirks into a smile that Lauren wants to bottle for her apothecary, save for a rainy day. It’s full of so much hope.

“Tell Dyson…” Lauren struggles, squeezes Tamsin’s hand. “Tell him that…I miss him.”

Slipping off the barstool, Tamsin twists around and meets Lauren’s gaze. She smiles again, bats a blonde lock away from Lauren’s eyes. “I will,” she says, and winks, and just like that her face changes, hardens, and she becomes again the Tamsin that has to go back out into the world and fight for the people she now knows how to love.

 

 

\---

 

 

Bo hasn’t been to see her in nearly a month and a half, and she hasn’t seen Dyson in three weeks. It makes sense later, after Evony tells her that the Una Mens have been slaughtered.

“It was Bo, wasn’t it?” Lauren asks with a resigned sort of devastation. They’re in Lauren’s bed, Evony sprawled out beneath the coral colored sheets, chin propped up on her palm as she faces Lauren, who is leaning back against the headboard.

“Bo and that bastard Rainer -- idiot got himself killed in the process," Evony says. “I mean don’t get me wrong, I would have done it myself, but you know.” She ripples four long, perfectly manicured fingers at Lauren. “Didn’t want to mess up my nails.”

Lauren looks up at the ceiling, overcome.

“Hey, everyone is safe,” Evony adds, seeing her reaction. “Everyone you love is okay.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Evony rolls onto her back and sighs. “Because you deserve to know.”

Lauren shakes her head, blinking through the desire to break down. She hasn’t cried in months and she wants to keep it that way.

“Listen, Lauren,” Evony continues, “there are a few other things you should know. The game is changing, and fast.” She sits up, starts to move closer, and Lauren watches her dark hair tumble down her back, watches her dark eyes turn deadly serious. “We think Rainer was a pawn. We think someone from our camp set him up to kill the Una Mens, to use Bo to help him do it, and trust me, I am not happy about it, either. The paperwork alone is gonna be a circus.”

“Because she’s unaligned? Is that why they're using her?" Lauren asks, furrowing her brows.

“Excuse you, _was_ unaligned. And,” Evony smirks knowingly, “we all know Bo is a slave to sexual healing, but that ain’t nothing compared to her heart. That bitch is gonna get her each and every time."

Lauren does know, is painfully aware of and well acquainted with Bo's heart. “If she loved or was made to love someone who asked her to kill for them, yeah, absolutely. She would. She has before.”

“A weakness that apparently just can't be helped,” Evony sighs. “It's a shame, really. And I don’t know if you’ve had this particular chat recently with Bo's half pint of a grandfather, so I'll tell you what he told me: Rainer’s gift was foresight. He was likely the only Fae who could have ever defeated the Una Mens."

"You think he was brainwashed too?"

"Perhaps, it would explain the urgency. Rainer was cursed centuries ago. Apparently, he had this whole sexy martyr thing going on...he would have done anything to put an end to tyrannical rule, so he’d have hated the Una Mens. He would have been a hit in the colonies, too," she adds as an afterthought.

Lauren leans forward. "So you've been speaking with Trick?"

Evony shrugs. "Yes, the interim Ash and I seem to have come to the same conclusion.” 

The expectant look on Lauren’s face makes Evony bristle slightly.

"That we should work together," Evony clarifies, reluctantly, and rolls her eyes. 

"Wait. The Una Mens are the oldest Fae order," Lauren says, "and they've been destroyed. This means the Origin Seed lore will come to pass."

For the first time in all the years Lauren has been acquainted with the leader of the Dark Fae, she looks worried. "That seed must be destroyed before whoever planned this can get ahold of it," Evony says. "Even I have my limits with power."

There's a soft noise as Lauren's head tilts back and hits the headboard. She closes her eyes. Her head is swimming with information and shock and disbelief and who, even, should she be trusting right now? Who should _any_ of them be trusting? "I'm sure Trick asked the same thing,” Lauren says, “but how do we know some other Dark Fae won't try to steal the seed instead of help destroy it? How do we really know that _you_ won't?"

Evony laughs. "You don't. We could do some team building trust exercises, but in the end, what's the alternative?"

Lauren considers this. "Okay," she says at last. She remembers Evony's peace offering (sincerely hopes, again, that that's what it actually was -- a show of good faith to come). Even if everything goes to hell, it wouldn’t be the first time. 

"Besides," Evony tells her, slinking nearer. "That's what I have you for, Dr. Lewis. You're Team Dark, but with morals and ethics intact. You'll keep me -- _us_ \-- in line."

Lauren contemplates this, and then reaches forward. She watches Evony's eyes as she slides her hand up the soft column of the woman’s neck. Evony’s eyelids flutter briefly, and when Lauren says,"If you harm any of them, I will kill you", Evony's lips curve a razor sharp smile.

Contrary to what Evony would normally believe a human to be capable of, coming from Lauren Lewis, she understands the relative validity of the threat. Lauren’s poker face is good; not the best she’s seen on a human, but it still makes her skin tingle. Evony responds by slithering her fingers down the bare skin of Lauren's abdomen very, very, slowly. "Darling," she purrs. "I'd expect nothing less."

For a Dark Fae in her lofty position, Evony cannot admit to it out loud or even fully to herself, but she is just as tired as the rest of them. Maybe there's a point to be made in the idea of diplomacy and freedom from alignment. She would have balked at the idea two years ago, but then again, two years ago she would never have admitted to herself either just how extraordinary Bo and her merry band of do-gooders actually were. She has Vex to thank for planting that seed, Lauren to thank for helping it grow.

Maybe, just maybe, masks and power aren't...well, _everything_.

“You’re getting soft in your old age, Evony,” Lauren breathes as that hand slides lower and lower, and for once in The Morrigan’s sinfully long life, she doesn't desire to retaliate against the unsavory accusation.

 

 

\---

 

 

When Lauren swings open her front door, Dyson is the first thing she sees.

“Oh, thank god,” she breathes, and throws her arms around his neck.

It’s not until she opens her eyes again that she notices Bo standing behind him.

Lauren sobers rather quickly, and takes a step back. Dyson’s hands fall away from her hips.

 

Bo narrows her eyes darkly as Lauren’s face turns away from her, and even though Bo is baffled and surprised and made jealous by the display, she thinks maybe she had it coming.

 

 

\---

 

 

They’re gonna need all the help they can get on this one. This one is a goddamn doozy.

Nobody knows exactly _how_ to destroy the Origin Seed, but everyone seems to have a theory and she’ll try them all. Trial and error _is_ Bo’s default method of operation, and like always, everyone else follows her lead.

Whether she really thinks she loved Rainer or not isn’t important now, but Lauren and Dyson can tell it has affected her deeply. Still, she’s a little too insistent about moving on, getting down to the business of saving the world. Again.

They don’t ask for an apology or to talk about it because it’s not something they need to do, especially in the face of this new crisis. They don’t ask questions of her because they want to move on as badly as she does. Dyson and Lauren both love her, and Bo loves them. She tries to begin to show them again the best she can, the way she used to: smiles and small touches, thank yous that are full of admiration and gratitude; things that should remind them that they are irreplaceable, two of the three most important people in her life. Bo is rougher for wear, now, but she’s more herself than they remember her being in a very long time. Lauren and Dyson still keep her close to them because they know she’s been through so much these last months. They will always forgive her, and they understand her role and their roles in the long fight to come. If sometimes (always) those smiles and touches she gives them feel sore around the edges, well, then, they just hold her closer still.

 

When Hale is killed, their whole world stands still and falls apart at the same time. Lauren and Dyson and Tamsin and Trick each take turns taking care of Kenzi, because Kenzi says she doesn’t want to see Bo at all. 

Wearily, Bo adds yet another tally to the list of awful things that have happened recently that she thinks she probably deserved but everyone else absolutely did not.

 

 

\---

 

 

They’ve taken to spending most of their time at Lauren’s place. Bo can’t be home right now, and Lauren is the one that has the research materials close at hand, has the full kitchen that she can cook them dinner in each night (usually in silence, and none of them eat very much, but Lauren is human and thinks it’s one of the few things she can offer to the cause apart from her knowledge).

One night, the three of them are poring over the records that Evony and Trick have provided, trying to find anything at all that will help them. When Dyson gets up to leave, Bo looks at Lauren.

The front door opens and shuts and once he’s gone, Bo asks, “He’s going to see Kenzi again, isn’t he?”

Lauren just looks at her sadly. Bo heads into Lauren’s bedroom a few minutes later with the mumbled excuse of being too tired to continue with their homework. It takes a lot for Lauren not to follow because she has never seen Bo’s eyes look so empty.

 

Two nights later, they’re sorting through the fae mythology texts and ancient history books that Lauren has procured for them, and Bo just...breaks down. Falls completely, utterly apart.

They all sort of see it coming.

Lauren and Dyson each take an arm and help her into bed. She’s sobbing like there is something trying to claw its way out of her chest, and Lauren tries to ease the endless succession of panic attacks the best she can. She tells Bo to breathe and breathe and her hand brushes up against Dyson’s as they smooth gently down Bo’s back.  


It takes hours. The minutes each pass like single stars appearing slowly in a night sky, one by one by one, and all any of them can do for most of the night is breathe and soothe, breathe and soothe, breathe and soothe.

Eventually, when Bo’s chest stops heaving, Lauren disentangles herself and grabs a glass of cool water from the kitchen and a small white pill from her cupboard. 

When she returns, Bo is curled against Dyson’s left side. 

“Bo,” she says gently, and Bo doesn’t need much coaxing to accept what Lauren offers. She is exhausted, eyes swollen from crying.

Lauren slides in against Bo’s back, wraps her arms around her waist. Dyson has one arm wrapped around Bo from behind, and he keeps that one there, but the other he moves to wrap around Bo’s waist, too. He circles his fingers around Lauren’s arm, and squeezes gently.

Bo begins to drift off, and as her breathing finally evens out, Lauren peers up over Bo’s head to catch Dyson’s gaze.

For a while they stare wordlessly, but eventually, Lauren lowers her head once more. She kisses Bo’s shoulder and slides her arm out of Dyson’s grasp just a little, just enough to interlock their fingers instead.

The two of them fall asleep like this, counting Bo’s thankfully steady breaths.

 

 

\---

 

 

It’s just getting light when she feels Bo stir. Bo pauses, and then slowly untangles herself from Lauren and Dyson’s arms.

Lauren stays still, and in the dim lavender light she watches Bo rummage around the room until she finds her boots. When she sits down gingerly at the edge of the bed to put them on, Lauren reaches out to touch her.

Bo stops, glances over. “Sorry,” she says. It’s so quiet in the room that even the whisper sounds too loud. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Where are you going?”

Bo sighs. “I don’t know. Away.”

“Bo--”

“--Thank you for being there for me last night. I wouldn’t have pulled through without you both. But listen, I just...”

Here, Lauren watches Bo’s face change in the pre-dawn shadows, watches the glassy tears well up in her eyes. Her gaze skips past Bo’s briefly because she notices that Dyson’s eyes are open now.

“I--I can’t _do_ this,” Bo whispers, choking on a swift sob. “I just can’t do this. I don’t have Kenzi, and I...I can’t…”

“You can,” Dyson interrupts suddenly, his voice very quiet. Bo turns to stare at him, and then buries her head into her hands. She looks like she wants to disappear.

“You can,” Lauren repeats. “I promise you, Bo. You can.”

Bo’s fingers clench too tightly in her own hair, joints flexing, nails digging. 

“Bo,” Dyson says. “This is what you were born for. Saving the world is what we do together, remember?”

“Kenzi is my heart,” Bo whispers. “And it is _breaking_. I was just beginning to feel like I was in control of my own life and then everything, everything, everything fell down all around me and after Rainer I thought, okay, soldier on, but I keep thinking about Kenzi and Hale and how I couldn’t save him, how I hurt _both of you_ and fucked everything else up too and I can’t even get it together long enough to--to even think about--about _saving_...”

She trails off crying, burying her face again.

Lauren inches closer, curves her hands around Bo’s jaw and lifts until Bo is looking into her eyes. “I know,” she tells her. “I know. But none of that was your fault, and we’ll help you pick up the pieces. We’re never going to leave you, Bo. We’re your heart, too.”

Lauren feels helpless but steady and she stares, fiercely, unblinking, into Bo’s eyes. After a few moments silence Bo sobs again, but this time it sounds more like a release. She wraps both of her hands around both of Lauren’s, and kisses her.

It takes Lauren by surprise, and there’s a part of her that knows Bo did it to stop the talking because it was too painful. There’s another part, deep down inside her chest, that can tell (in the pull of Bo’s mouth, the pressure, the building urgency) that Bo needs to be _shown_ something. She needs tangibility, needs to know that Dyson and Lauren are really here, really hers. She needs to know they aren't leaving like everyone else (including Bo herself).

So Lauren lets go and kisses Bo like the world is on fire, like the stars are all falling from the sky, and days and days seem to pass before Lauren opens her eyes again because Bo begins to pull away. Bo’s face is flushed and affected and Lauren understands, a moment later, that Bo stopped because Dyson has come closer, has begun to slide his hands up Bo’s arms.

Bo lets herself fall back against Dyson’s chest, and Lauren closes the space between them with her own body not long after.

“We’ve got you,” he whispers into Bo's ear. Her eyelids flutter and close. Lauren thinks she looks so, so beautiful and so, so vulnerable and when she looks at Dyson, Lauren sees her love reflected on his face.

Dyson trails his hands down Bo’s sides and then back up again, bends his head over her neck, and Lauren just watches, thinking about how long it took to get here (wherever here is) and about how she never thought it would be Bo herself who would quit them before they did (Dyson’s hands ruck up Bo’s shirt as they slide, exposing a swath of pale skin to the soft lavender light). She never thought she and Dyson would be the ones to choose _for_ her once she came back.

(Bo sighs, lets Dyson slip her shirt over her head, and Bo’s hair falls messy around her face and bare shoulders, around the curves of her breasts, while Lauren’s breathing grows increasingly shallow. She meets Dyson’s eyes again, and he looks just as breathless.)

But Bo will always come back, and they did choose.

(Bo reaches out, tugs Lauren closer by the loose fabric of her shirt, and Lauren feels Dyson’s hand begin to thread through her hair, feels Bo’s fingers free the long line of buttons to reveal the skin beneath, feels three warm palms start to spread across her ribs and Lauren just…trembles, closes her eyes, and leans in.)

In the end, they decided not to choose at all, because they both love Bo, and Bo has made Lauren and Dyson see in each other what Bo has always seen in each of them. They want to take care of each other now, they want take care of Bo, they want to take care of this whole small, fragile family that they’ve found and sustained and nurtured. And if repeatedly saving the world happens to coincide with this desire, well then, all the better.

(Bo kisses Lauren again, turns her head to kiss Dyson, and when Dyson then brings his mouth to Lauren's in turn and Lauren whimpers softly against his lips, the heat coiling in Bo's belly rises up and spills over every single edge she possesses. It floods her entire body, waves upon waves of it crashing over her relentlessly, and she can barely breathe through the immediate need to touch them both again, to watch them touch each other.

It turns messy quickly after that, uncoordinated and clumsy and desperate but Bo has never, ever been a part of something so intensely passionate. Hours pass, and they don't even come up for air.)

 

They fall asleep entwined again, exhausted and sated and Bo watches the sun begin to peek through the window panes as Dyson and Lauren sleep quietly beside her. She loves them both so much that she thinks her heart might never cease to swell and burst with the sheer width and depth of it, and she decides that it's not so crazy to think that everything might actually turn out okay after all.

The three of them were always going to accomplish much more together than they ever would have apart.

 

 

\---

 

 

Evony doesn't disappoint them. A breakthrough comes in the form of a loophole in the Seed Summoning Spell that she unearths from the deepest and darkest part of the Dark archives, and they slip in and destroy the thing before any more blood is shed. Well, before _much_ more blood is shed, anyway.

There are few minor complications (a dragonfire burn on Bo's left elbow; a week-long literal hangover from hell that comes as a direct result of a brief bout of demonic possession by the seed's underfae guardian; two black eyes, five broken ribs, three stab wounds and six bloody noses between them all -- Lauren has her work cut out for her for a month).

There are a few minor casualties, too (Geraldine, who Kenzi insists on burying at the battle site; Bo's favorite leather game day jacket; and of course the seed itself), but all in all, everyone comes out relatively unscathed for it being the Final Showdown between battling Fae power structures.

Evony and Trick agree to keep the titles of Light and Dark for posterity and tradition, for clan affiliation and all of the protection and identity that sort of affiliation affords. They also retain their own titles, although their positions of leadership are now much more ceremonial in nature. 

There is no more harnessed power, no more join or die. For the first time in Fae history, Bo isn't the only one who chooses to be unaligned. 

Kenzi and Bo are on the road to being okay again. She and Lauren both gain the protection of the ceremonial Light and the ceremonial Dark. Because of their service, their willingness to put their own lives on the line (recently and for years), they are now free to roam anywhere in the Fae world as long as they abide by its rules (revised and considerably less restrictive now, thanks to them). They are both free to choose their own paths, and they both still choose Bo.

Massimo is, as ever, numero uno on their hit list, and they are all looking forward to giving him a slow and painful retribution once he comes out of hiding. But Hale’s wake, which had been postponed indefinitely until recently, gives them all a sense of closure. It gives them peace and perspective and a way to come together and remember him. They keep vigil all night in a close circle with lit candles the color of pearls, and Hale's sister is there to sing him into the Long Silence, as has been his family's tradition for centuries. They spread his ashes at the seaside at dawn, and Kenzi sends his favorite fedora out into the gently rolling waves.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Thank you," Lauren says to Evony, and she's never meant the sentiment more in her entire life.

Evony grins. "It all worked out fairly well in the end, didn't it?" She's wearing the same black Gucci that she was wearing the night Lauren undressed her for the first time. 

Lauren smiles and glances to the floor. "It did indeed," she says.

"It feels strange," Evony admits, "not being top dog around here."

Lauren tuts softly. "Oh, now. Just because you don't have an army of underlings to look after anymore doesn't mean you aren't still the Alpha," she says. "Doctor’s advice? Enjoy the extended vacation."

Evony's dark eyes sparkle, and she sits gently on the edge of her desk. Her offices are busy as ever signing new artists and working out the logistics of the new Fae order, but Lauren is helping Evony keep the business on the right side of ethical, this time. "I will, Dr. Lewis. Thank you for all of your hard work. And your... _hard_. Work." Evony's voice is velvet and teasing, the innuendo rolling off the tip of her tongue so very naturally. Lauren welcomes it.

It's nice to know things are getting back to a new normal.

Lauren heads for the door. When her hand is on the doorknob, Evony calls out to her one last time.

"If you ever tire of that boring old wolf and the insatiable succubus, you know where to find me, sweetie."

Lauren laughs. "I do," she says, but she can't imagine a time when Bo and Dyson will not fill every part of her there is to fill, and more. "I'll see you around, Evony."

 

 

\---

 

 

Lauren and Dyson are sitting on the couch reading when Lauren’s phone chimes into the silence.

“On call, doctor?” he teases, nudging her feet fondly where they rest on his lap.

Lauren smirks and brings the receiver to her ear.

“Hey lovers,” Bo’s voice sounds from the other line, throaty and playful.

Lauren smiles and looks at Dyson. “Hi. Still with Kenzi?”

“Just barely left, she and Trick are revising the Light-Only clause on The Dal’s lease,” Bo tells her, and she sounds so, so happy. “But listen, I’m going to be home late. There’s someone else I really need to see tonight, okay?”

“Sure,” Lauren says. “Of course. We’ll see you when you get home.”

Bo’s warm laughter rings against her ear. “Okay. I love you, babe. Tell Dyson too. You guys know where to reach me.”

When Lauren slips the phone back onto the coffee table, Dyson tugs her back against him gently. Their books lie forgotten against the arm rests. “She’s going to see Tamsin?”

The corner of Lauren’s mouth twists up. “Yeah,” she says. “She’ll be home late.”

“Ah,” Dyson sighs. “Well, they deserve some time to themselves. Tamsin has been missing her.”

Lauren smiles and nods and exhales, because everything just...doesn’t even hurt, anymore. The people she cares about are safe, and she trusts them wholly. They all take care of each other. There’s no need for jealousy or secrecy and Lauren finds that ever since giving up, giving in, and realizing this, she feels so, so free. All Lauren has ever wanted is to feel free (it’s all Bo has ever wanted, too). She feels that free, now. Finally. She feels strong. Her heart feels strong. The people that love her make sure of it. 

“You and _I_ deserve some time to catch up,” she tells Dyson. She covers his hand with hers, and he smiles at her, warm and bright and gentle.

Sometimes, Dyson feels as though he’s still just keeping Lauren safe for Bo until she returns from wherever she is at any given time (he’s getting better at realizing that’s not true anymore for so many reasons -- not in the least because Lauren doesn’t really need her protection), and sometimes Lauren has to remind herself that Dyson doesn’t belong to just Bo, either. She has to remind herself that she can care for Dyson the way she cares for him, and that he can care for her the same way, and it doesn’t have to affect her own sense of integrity at all. It actually strengthens it, because even though it used to be something else between them, it’s love now and love will always blow the doors off of everything that is seemingly drawn out and defined. This has been Lauren’s experience, anyway.

She’s learned to roll with it. She and Dyson and Bo are learning together, and they’ll continue learning together until something stops them (which, thankfully, will not be anytime soon, they’re pretty sure -- the whole Origin Seed saga has earned them more than enough karma points for a while).

And even then, they know they won’t give up, that they can work together to move past obstacles -- because they love each other, and overcoming odds stacked high against them is a thing they have a hell of a lot of experience succeeding in.

 

When Bo tip-toes into the apartment hours later, she cracks open the bedroom door quietly and a sliver of light from the hallway falls across the bed.

Bo leans up against the door frame and stares inside for a long, long time. Dyson is curled up in Lauren’s arms, skin to skin, and they’re both breathing steadily, and Bo almost can’t believe that this is real. That she has them both, that they want her, and that they trust her to always come home.

That even without her, they’ve become each other’s family.

Bo slips out of her denim and strips away her tank, crawls in beneath the sheet and presses herself against Lauren’s side. Lauren hums contentedly and re-adjusts her cheek against Dyson’s head sleepily.

They are so beautiful.

In the morning, Bo swears she’s going to wake up early and make them blueberry chocolate chip pancakes and real coffee with Lauren’s fancy espresso machine. In the meantime, she settles her body in closer to Lauren’s, reaches a hand to Dyson’s bare chest, and breathes.

(Or maybe, Bo thinks, just before drifting off, she will wait to do breakfast until later, so that she can be there with them in the morning when they wake.)

 

 

\---


End file.
